Fixing a stuck control key without rebooting

If you’ve messed with xte or xdotool, you’ve inevitably found your computer…not typing right. Turns out, your control is stuck down with no way of unsticking it. You begrudingly reboot the computer.

Last week, that was me, here’s a solution to the problem:

1. write a keyup-modifiers script

   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   echo keyup Control_L | xte
   echo keyup Control_R | xte
   echo keyup Shift_L | xte
   echo keyup Shift_R | xte
   echo keyup Meta_L | xte
   echo keyup Meta_R | xte
   echo keyup Alt_L | xte
   echo keyup Alt_R | xte
   echo keyup Super_L | xte
   echo keyup Super_R | xte

2. Bind it to your window manager’s keychord alt + shift + ctrl + c in i3. the c doesn’t matter but alt + shift + ctrl is super important as it’ll work no matter which one’s accidentally stuck.

   in i3 this is

   bindsym $mod+Shift+Control+c exec keyup-modifiers

And voila, no more rebooting.